Evolutionary methods

The Evolutionary Resource

The Evolutionary Resource provides a comparative overview of RNA expression across mammalian species, covering major organs and tissues throughout the body, with additional anatomical detail for different regions of the brain. The resource takes a human gene-centric perspective, focusing on orthologous genes across species and enabling direct exploration of their tissue expression profiles. While the major organs and tissues are represented across species, some differences in coverage reflect species-specific anatomy, biological variation, and sample availability.

RNA expression profiles are used to classify genes according to their tissue specificity within each species, enabling comparisons of tissue-enriched expression patterns and their conservation across mammals. The resource also allows users to explore the expression of individual genes across species, providing insights into evolutionary similarities and differences in gene expression and helping to assess the relevance of different animal models for studying human genes and proteins of interest. More information about the datasets and analytical methods can be found in the Methods Summary.

Learn about:

• RNA expression profiles across major organs and tissues in different mammalian species
• Tissue-specific and tissue-enriched genes across species
• Conservation and divergence of gene expression patterns during mammalian evolution
• Expression of human gene orthologues in different animal models
• Regional gene expression patterns across the brain